“The rangers I have who are in the high country have pretty much concluded anything over 7,000 feet in elevation is still frozen,“ says Don Lane, supervisory recreation forester for the U.S. Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe unit. “Lake Tahoe is at 6,200 feet, and the lakes above it in the mountains are all ice.”

“Here we are into June now, and we’re still experiencing these storms,” says Lane. “When I’m looking out the window now, I see blue sky but also these big roiling clouds over the mountains.”

The list of frozen lakes is long, but notable ones include Marlette and Spooner on the Eastern Shore, and Incline and Watson on the North Shore. To the west in Desolation Wilderness, there are roughly 130 high-country lakes, including the Echo Lakes and Aloha Lakes areas.

Many of these lakes are popular spots for late spring and summer hiking excursions, but Lane says the frozen conditions can be dangerous.

“There are people who will occasionally try their luck at walking across the ice and then all of a sudden it becomes brittle and cracks,” he says.

Lane also advises against swimming in icy lakes. Just this week, he received a call from a Tahoe visitor who tried exactly that.

“He called to say, ‘I was up at Eagle Lake in the Emerald Bay Area and I broke the ice to try to go swimming,” Lane explains. “Then he asked, ‘Can you tell me how cold the water is?’ I told him that since water freezes at 32 degrees, he should be able to figure out roughly what the temperature was.”

Tahoe resident Anthony Capaiuolo was at Fourth of July Lake and Emigrant Lake at 8,500 feet near Kirkwood in May, and says conditions were safe for him and his friends to ski across.